A Look at Autodesk's Maya 2008

SIGGRAPH
is often the place where big events, announcements and software
launches are hosted. This year, history repeated itself for
Autodesk, as they let us know about a lot of things happening
inside the company, including Maya 2008. Available in both 64bit
and 32bit for Windows and Linux, and 32bit for MacOSX, Maya 2008 is
the first release to be completely compatible with
Microsoft’s new Windows Vista operating system. If you had
used previous versions of Maya on Windows Vista, you surely noticed
that they automatically turned off the Aero Glass look (unless you
had turned it off yourself because of any video card or performance
issues you may have been experiencing). However, Maya 2008 will
work with the Aero Glass on, meaning it’s finally compatible
with the new display driver model.

Maya 2008 includes several workflow enhancements in all the
different modules, including some that might be considered a
“Godsend” by some users, maybe because they allow you
to work a little faster, or because they are tools not available
before. The first change you notice when you open the program is
the new navigation cube that came to replace the “view
compass”. It works exactly as before, save for the fact that
you can not only select the faces, but also the corners and edges,
which gives you the ability to change between 26 different views by
clicking on the different “hot" areas.

If you are a fan of polygon modeling and smooth proxy modeling,
you might find the smoothing preview option very useful. What it
does is show a smooth version of the model, and it updates
dynamically as you model (just like the smooth proxy or subdivision
proxy for subdivision modeling). However, what’s particularly
special about this feature is that you don’t affect your
object’s construction history when used, since it works
directly on the object’s display options (you
activate/deactivate it by pressing the keys 1 through 3 on your
keyboard). When you are happy with the result, you can either turn
that option off and keep the low resolution model, or use the
“smooth preview to polygons” command.

Another addition to the modeling toolset is the ability to slide
polygon edges. You may be familiar with this command since
it’s available in other software packages (such as Cinema4D).
Although the feature is more than welcome, the ability to slide
vertices would also be very useful.

Animation is always what interests me the most about any 3D
software package, and ever since the introduction of the Full Body
IK system, I’ve considered Maya to be the king when it comes
to character animation. However, Full Body IK proved to be hard to
get used to since you couldn’t animate the rigs as you would
animate any other object (you surely might remember the “set
key modes” in the contextual menu). Maya 2008 makes it easier
to work with since it allows you to set keys using the
“s” key, which means you can completely forget about
setting the keys using the contextual menu.

Skinning and weighting has also been improved greatly. If you
are a rigger, you have surely found yourself in the following
scenario: Your skin weights are perfect and you start animating the
model (or someone else). However, you notice that some parts are
not moving as you expected, and after studying the skeleton you
realize you’d get the perfect deformation if your bones were
placed differently, or if you had an extra bone somewhere. Maya
2008 makes it easier to tweak your rig in a non-destructive manner.
You can move, insert, connect or disconnect joints without
detaching your skin. Another nice feature is the
template/untemplate channels in the graph editor. This command
works exactly like the template geometry, however, it operates on
animation curves in the graph editor window.

In Maya 8.5, Autodesk introduced a new unified dynamics
framework (Nucleus), as well as the first Nucleus module: nCloth.
nCloth offers some new features and also a few sample files that
you can use to learn more about the cloth simulator and the
different applications for it. If you have used Syflex before as a
replacement for Maya Cloth, one of the main reasons why you made
the switch is surely the fact that Maya Cloth doesn’t fully
support cloth meshes that are not created using the native Cloth
tools. Maya nCloth allows you to use any mesh as a cloth object,
and set it up differently depending on your requirements. Syflex
may still be the fastest cloth simulator commercially available,
but nCloth is far more versatile.

Unfortunately, we will have to wait a little longer for the next
Nucleus module, since nCloth is still the only one to use the new
framework.

Mentalray rendering has also gone through some improvements, as
well as rendering in general. One of the nicest additions is the
fact that you can now render hardware particles using Mentalray.
Since the particles are now supported in Mentalray, they also
support the software-based rendering algorithms such as motion
blur, shadow casting and reflections. There are also new Mentalray
shaders, including the “mia_material_x shader”, which
can simulate different kinds of materials used for construction and
industrial design.

Overall, Maya 2008 is a sound release, focusing on improving the
user’s workflow via additional tools, or reinventing existing
tools. Personally, I would have liked to see a new Nucleus module
(maybe Maya nFur, since Fur in Maya seems to be one of the least
updated modules, and has been greatly surpassed by third party
applications such as Shave and Haircut), but that is going to take
a little longer. On the other hand, if you’ve been following
the news, you surely heard that Autodesk bought Comet Digital last
month and that the new Maya 2008 Extension 1 includes a built-in
muscle system. So far, the only software I had seen that included
such functionality out of the box was Houdini (as software packages
are updated, that may have changed some time ago, so don’t
take my word for it). However, thanks to that acquisition one of
the best animation software packages available as of today, ships
with one of the best digital muscle systems out there.

Maya 2008 Extension 1 has been available since the first week of
December for subscribers with Gold Support.

All supporting images are copyright, and cannot be
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permission.

Animation
Alley is a regular featured column with Renderosity Staff
Columnist Sergio Rosa
[nemirc]. Sergio discusses on computer graphics software,
animation techniques, and technology. He also hosts interviews with
professionals in the animation and cinematography
fields.

December 17,
2007

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